DESCRIPTION (Applicant's abstract verbatim): The broad, long-term commercial objective of this project is to produce a prototype software system that leads to a profitable product for tissue characterization by 3D image processing, with a broad popularity among neuroscientists, biologists, industrial pharmacology, food science and other broad applications. The long-term scientific objective is to provide a means for accurately, quickly and economically detecting and monitoring the 3D character of tissue, with a focus on applications in detecting changes in neurological (brain) experimental animal tissue due to specific agents. The innovations of this work are: (1) the novel extension of automated feature extraction and tissue characterization methods to that of 3D image processing, (2) novel extensions and new approaches to such algorithms that will make the algorithm robust against adverse laboratory conditions, (3) developing the first commercial product that comprehensively analyzes the 3D character of biological tissue, (4), a Strategic approach to balancing the amount of labor required by the experimenter to maintain full control over the experiment and to maintain confidence in the results of the experiment versus the level of automation necessary to eliminate tedium, inaccuracies and the prohibitive amount of work that is otherwise necessary in carrying out such comprehensive characterizations, and (5), a novel interactive 3D editor system, which will provide quick, powerful and easy-to-operate 3D point-and-click image editing and 3D morphometric measurement. PROPOSED COMMERCIAL APPLICATION: Not Available